Re:Google CEO says more than a quarter of the company's new ...
by ethbr1 on Thursday October 31, 2024 @03:06PM
(#42010296)
The reason you don't lead with headcount reduction is two-fold.
1. Almost every business has growing workload. That means reassigning good employees and not hiring new headcount, not firing existing headcount. Unipurpose, low-value offshore teams are the only ones who get cut (e.g. doing "{this} for every one of {these}" work).
2. Most operational automation is impossible to build well without deep process expertise from the SME currently performing it. If you fire that person immediately after automating their task, what do you think the next SME tells you, when you need their help?
Successfully scaling operational automation programs therefore rely on additional headcount avoidance (aka improving their volume:employee ratio) and value measurement (FTE-equivalent time savings) to justify/measure.
1. Almost every business has growing workload. That means reassigning good employees and not hiring new headcount, not firing existing headcount. Unipurpose, low-value offshore teams are the only ones who get cut (e.g. doing "{this} for every one of {these}" work).
2. Most operational automation is impossible to build well without deep process expertise from the SME currently performing it. If you fire that person immediately after automating their task, what do you think the next SME tells you, when you need their help?
Successfully scaling operational automation programs therefore rely on additional headcount avoidance (aka improving their volume:employee ratio) and value measurement (FTE-equivalent time savings) to justify/measure.